A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Blessed are we who want to be a part of the wild and beautiful experiment to find a common humanity…Blessed are we, willing to stay in the gap, in the contradictions of what we can’t understand.
-Kate Bowler & Jessica Richie, The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days
From Well for the Journey

Wrapping Ourselves in Nature this Fall
Two offerings from The Wisdom Years – a fall Quiet Day and an Advent book study – will draw us into the bounties and blessings of nature this fall. Our fall Quiet Day, actually a morning, will offer opportunity to wander the beautiful grounds of Cathedral Park in San Antonio on Nov. 30. Click here for the details.
Our Advent study will embrace daily meditations from the animals using Gayle Boss’s All Creation Waits. We gather on Thursdays Dec. 7, 14, and 21 on Zoom for conversation. Click here for details.

We Belong to Each Other
A child is shot on the streets of Sarajevo. A man leans down to comfort her and to get her to a hospital. She dies anyway. Is she your child? a reporter asks. “No,” says the man. “But aren’t they all our children?”
From Terry Hershey’s Sabbath Moment.

In Praise of Silence
We all need silence in our lives, but it is not that simple. We also need public life. Spiritual writers in the past have often given the “too-simple impression that God and spiritual depth were only found in silence,” says Fr. Ron Rolheiser “as if the joys of human work, conversation, celebration, family, and community were somehow opposed to spiritual growth.”
From Ron Rolheiser.

The Practice Before The Practice
“A life of spirit, regardless of the path we choose, begins with a person’s acceptance that they are part of something larger than themselves,” says Mark Nepo in this essay. “We want to know who we really are and to know the truth of our existence and our connection to a living Universe.”
From Awakin.

The Yellow Umbrella
A little girl goes with her mother to take used toys to an orphanage. But it is her yellow umbrella that recalls memories for one little boy.
Watch this short animated video.
From Karmatube.
Gathered Wisdom is an offering of The Wisdom Years, a ministry devoted to the spiritual journey of the last third of our lives.
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